Page 83 of Penance

Kacey starts the engine, pulling us out onto the road, everyone sitting in silence, my body tense, the girls quiet. Nothing like the journey on the way here. We had music pounding through the speakers, the windows open, the girls laughing and throwing back little cans of pre-mixed cocktails.

The silence now is deafening. No one daring to breathe too loudly for reasons unknown, everyone just on edge.

I breathe a sigh of relief as we merge onto the main road. Not many about, unsurprisingly, considering it’s just after three-am, but seeing some black cabs about makes me feel a little better.

It’s only when we’re halfway back to Dee’s, everyone starting to relax again. Murmured conversations starting back up, that a bullet lodges in the back window.

Chapter17

Kyla-Rose

Impulse has me grabbing the back of Ashlee’s head and slamming it down between her knees.

“Stay the fuck down,” I shout at her. Ducking low, my eyes trained up front, my hand rummaging around in the seat pocket for a gun. “Kace?”

“I got it, Sweetheart,” he yells back, his foot slamming onto the accelerator.

The car purrs beneath us, sharp turns have me unclipping my seatbelt so I can reach across Ashlee. My hand sliding into the leather seat pocket in front of her. My fingers finding nothing. I huff in frustration, a bullet hits the rear window again, not penetrating the reinforced glass. Ashlee turns her head, her cheek on her knees, blue eyes wide, I nod. There’re no words that can make a situation like this any better. But she knows what I’m silently translating. We’re gunna get out of this, and she’s going to be fine.

“Someone give me a gun,” I hiss in frustration.

Internally cursing my recklessness in choosing such a tiny fucking outfit. The car careening wildly, left to right. The back tyre taking a hit, I send thanks to whoever invented run-flat tyres as we tear down the road at high speed. I reach my good arm over the seat, grabbing a fistful of Max’s t-shirt. He turns his body coiled in a hunched position.

“Get me a gun. There should be one in every seat pocket, there’s none back here.” I jolt, another bullet hitting the back window, another, another. “Fuck,Kacey!” I almost screech knowing this is absolutelynotgood.

“I know, baby girl,” Kacey grunts back, the car taking a screeching right turn.

I fall to the left, my body bumping into Ashlee. Her hands steadying me as I sit up onto my knees. The back window cracks, the glass spider webbing as bullet after bullet collides with it. I hear Ronan from the front seat, on the phone, barking about shots fired and my lungs scream as I hold my breath. Max passes me a gun, the magazine fucking empty.

“What in the fuck?!” I screech in anger, my eyes squeezing tight for just a second. I breathe through my nose, “how many are on us?”

“Four,” Dom states clinically, slamming a fresh magazine into his gun. “Crawl through, Ky,” he instructs me.

I slither over the back seats. Max rapidly pulling me over his shoulder, I land across their laps, my head in Dom’s lap. I look up at him, his startling grey eyes on mine.

“Sunroof,” is all he says, I nod.

Max’s grip tightens on the back of my thigh.

“No,” Max threatens, danger emanating off him in thick plumes.

“I got this,” I tell him,promisinghim. “Trust me,” I murmur, Huxley hauling me up to sitting by my calves. “Kacey, can we take a sharp corner?” I shout forward.

“You got it, Sweetheart!”

Ronan looks at me over his shoulder, a wide grin on his face.

“This is the family reunion I was fucking waiting for! Fuck yeah!” he slaps his huge thigh.

His finger pressing the button to open the sunroof, it starts to crawl open. The last time we were all together like this was Italy a few years ago, fucking up my cousin, Scarlett’s, ex, Jameson Bianchi. The slimy little fuck. It was the best holiday of mine and Charlie’s lives.

I squirm up onto my knees, Dom handing me the loaded weapon. I frown at him as he rolls his window down.

“I brought something of Eli’s with me,” he says, so blankly, so stoically. “When in London,” he shrugs, and I want to laugh as he ever so casually pulls a sawn-off shotgun out from beneath Kacey’s seat.

That isveryEli.

Eli thinks of himself as some sort of British thug from the sixties, he’s not about the automatics, not even the semis. Give him an old cricket bat, some brass knuckles, and a sawn-off shotgun any day and he’s happy.

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